Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

... to filkcook!!! Have a great one!! And while I'm at it, a slightly belated Hippo, Birdie, etc. to jhayman and khaosworks!!!

River: The connection I needed?

Is this the causal link I was looking for to explain my mood shift?

It seems that coeliac disease is linked to vitamin D malabsorption (also calcium and vitamin B12, which I've been taking supplements for), which in turn is linked to SAD and depression.

OK, vitamin D supplements and no more gluten. We'll see if those work. Thanks to all the friends who helped me make the connection, especially dormouse_in_tea and mia_mcdavid.

Gadget lust -- the new Minox

Minox DSC

DSC is the name of the new mini MINOX model: Digital SpyCam. This outstanding masterpiece in minimalist design and photo technology packs remarkable features into dimensions of just 86 x 29 x 20 mm. With a resolution of five million pixels it can compete with traditional digital cameras with ease. The bright viewfinder allows spontaneous, fast shots, even in critical light conditions. In twilight the integrated flash switches on automatically. In total these features make the new DSC a very sound optical notebook.

(from Gizmodo)

Back in the day, I owned a Minox C, complete with tiny dials that you operated with your thumb, and a chain marked off with beads so that you could set the focus for the exact distance to the document you were trying to copy. I want this!

Sunday wrap-up

Sunday (yesterday, assuming I get this post finished in the next five-and-a-half hours) was reasonably well-filled with Good Things. I'm not complaining.

I woke up long before Colleen, as usual; eventually she noticed and sent me out, first for an English muffin with butter (so she could take her meds), then for a walk. I walked from the motel to the little shopping center at the corner of Pony Express Trail and Sly Park Road; about 45 minutes round trip.

After I got back it didn't take long to load out; we headed back to the Buttercup Pantry in Placerville. I had a seafood omlette this time, with hollandaise sauce. Made of yum. Hollandaise seems to be particularly good on egg dishes.

Placerville is an old gold-mining town; it got the name "Hangtown" (as in ... Fry) from, obviously, the numerous hangings it was host to.

The drive home was uneventful, but pleasant. I love taking long drives with the Cat, and with gas prices what they are these days it's good to have an excuse.

 

After an hour or two to catch my breath, I headed up to Berkeley for donsimpson's 70th birthday party. Fewer people than I expected, and it's a good thing Colleen didn't go; she wouldn't have been able to handle the stairs. I sang The River, Wheelin', Quiet Victories, and (obviously) Don's Ship of Stone. Which remains my all-time favorite song.

Decided I wasn't up to unwinding the directions in the dark, especially since I was on a street far too narrow to turn around on, and parts of the route I'd come in on didn't look particularly reversable. A look at the map showed that I was close to SR13, so I took that, heading South. South SR13 merged smoothly onto East I580 (which heads South from Berkeley); I turned off onto North SR238, just before 580 finally heads East, to go West to South I880. I love the Bay Area. It was a fun explore.

 

This is, by the way, another data point on panic and being lost. I had one look at a Google maps printout, which only got me as far as SR13. From there I was, essentially, lost. I was not in a state of panic -- what I was feeling was the sort of calm curiosity I feel when I'm solving a problem, or taking a walking tour of a city I've never explored before.

I think that there's a lot of history with Colleen -- she has seen me panic in the car, about 25 years ago. The kids have seen me get (mildly) lost and flustered, and have seen what happens when my memory of a map or a previous trip disagrees with the directions I'm hearing. There are several feedback loops that happen when somebody else is in the car, either trying to be helpful, or teasing me because I'm lost again, or maybe just counting on me to know what the heck I'm doing. They're not there when I'm by myself.

River: Calibration

This is an expansion of a topic I raised in this post, where I wrote:

We never did get to do any wine-tasting (though the wine at the wedding was excellent, as one might expect, and made up for the lack). This occasioned an argument, too: I could hear the disappointment in Colleen's voice, but she said "no" when I first asked her whether she was disappointed. A lifetime of social conditioning will do that. But it's disastrous for someone like me who can't read people very well, and has to get accurate feedback when I try to confirm my guesses. I think the normal expectation is that somebody will understand the tone of voice and interpret the polite denial as a subtle request to leave the subject alone. I don't do subtle, and don't trust my ability to "read" people.

In other words, my ability to perceive moods and emotions in other people -- even in myself -- is highly unreliable and inaccurate; I need to calibrate it by getting feedback from people, to see whether my guesses are correct. My ability to understand implicit communication and hints is practically nonexistent. As I've often remarked here, I don't do subtle.

 

Most people -- "normal" people, as opposed to geeks like me -- appear to rely heavily on one another's ability to read emotions and recognize implied communication. This leads to a social convention whereby a short, polite answer to a question establishes a polite fiction that is often contradicted by an emotional undercurrent that people like me usually miss, leading to total lack of real communication.

So, in the preceeding exchange, we had Colleen giving what I'll call the "social answer" to my question, relying on my (nearly nonexistant) emotional perception to supply the "real answer". Which I still don't fully understand. I understood that she was disappointed, but have no idea what the implied message might have been. "I don't want to discuss it"? "I want to discuss it but only if you want to as well"? "I was disappointed but don't want to get into an argument"? All of the above? Something else? Probably. But I don't think Colleen herself knows, or could give me any help understanding it. It was hard enough calibrating my reading of her mood.

I may never get any good at all at understanding -- or even detecting -- implied messages, but my ability to read emotions is improving, largely because I'm getting a little better at calibrating my readings.

The trick, for me, is recognizing when I'm getting a "social answer", and framing a question or two that will elicit the "real answer". So,

"Are you disappointed?"

"Not really."

"I thought I heard disappointment in your voice. Are you disappointed?"

"Of course I was disappointed. You told me..."

Similarly, take a common social greeting:

"How are you doing?"

"OK."

"You look a little down."

"Well, ... "

What follows the "Well,..." could be anything from "I just haven't had my coffee yet" to "My mother died yesterday" -- the social convention appears to be to give a noncommittal answer and let the other party follow it up if they really care about the person and want the real answer. Or something. I'm still not really sure; all I know is that I have to follow up if I want to get the real answer.

As I say, I'm getting better at this. In other cases I'll try to paraphrase a response that seems to be ambiguous, or request further information when the response seems incomplete. I think that most people find this annoying and perhaps even offensive, but I can't help that -- I need my calibration, my feedback, or I won't understand what they were trying to tell me.

It would be unrealistic and totally unfair of me to ask people to give me a real answer to an ordinary social question. The social answer is what almost all of the people they communicate with are expecting. The social convention serves them well; I'm guessing that it lets the conversation drop before getting into realm of real emotions unless both parties are prepared to go deeper. Basically, it's up to me to figure out when, and whether, I need to follow up.

Similarly, I'm far enough outside most people's normal range of experience that they're almost certain to misunderstand me -- they misinterpret my tone of voice, or look for an implied message that isn't there, and find something I didn't say. They don't follow up, of course. It's up to me to notice when they're misinterpreting what I said, and try to correct it. Often it's too late: I've made them angry or distressed, and they've stopped listening to me. Other times I simply don't notice, and they go off thinking I said something totally different from whatever I actually said.

Public Service Announcement #1: When I say something to you, there is no implied message or hidden meaning. The words I used said precisely what I meant to say, at least if I was at all careful about framing them. If you don't believe me, or don't understand me, or think there was some implied message, ask me.

Public Service Announcement #2: I don't do subtle. If you want to tell me something, use words and say it explicitly and in detail. Don't rely on my ability to pick up hints and hidden assumptions -- I don't have that ability.